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New Worlds, Old Worlds, Lost Worlds: Picturing Prehistory in American Culture

Unrolling Prehistory: Egan’s Moving Panorama and the Mediation of Archaeological Knowledge in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America

Lucie Grandjean

Résumés

Cet article analyse un panorama mouvant commandité par l’archéologue Wilson Montroville Dickeson au peintre John Egan au milieu du XIXe siècle, à la suite de ses excavations dans la vallée du Mississippi. Ce panorama ne représente pas le fleuve lui-même, mais la vallée, offrant une vision non linéaire mêlant paysages et cultures autochtones du passé et du présent. Composé de vingt-cinq vignettes sans lien temporel ou géographique clair, il combine reconstitutions de monuments anciens et reproductions de portraits contemporains des populations autochtones, notamment ceux réalisés quelques années auparavant par le peintre George Catlin. L’article évoque la manière dont Dickeson utilise ce spectacle visuel pour transmettre sa vision de l’histoire, mêlant ethnologie, archéologie et culture visuelle. Le panorama sert ainsi non seulement à diffuser des théories sur les « mound builders », mais aussi à s’approprier de manière kaléidoscopique un même paysage en y juxtaposant diverses strates culturelles, temporelles et géologiques.

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Figure 1. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Figure 1. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

  • 1 The painter is John J. Egan, American (born in Ireland), active mid-nineteenth century.
  • 2 Well-known variations on the theme include Banvard’s Geographical Panorama of the Mississippi River (...)
  • 3 Some contemporaries of Dickeson mentioned in this article are Edwin Hamilton Davis and Ephraim Geor (...)

1Two Native Americans pointing at the tumuli of Marietta, Ohio; the Ohio River in the background encircling the scene and mountains closing the perspective (Fig. 1). Such was the first glimpse at the Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley that spectators could see starting in the 1850s in the United States.1 The Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley was neither the only nor the first moving panorama depicting such a subject in the middle of the century.2 However, departing from these contemporary iterations, the Irish-born painter John J. Egan brought to life the vision of Wilson Montroville Dickeson (1810-1882), an American archaeologist from Philadelphia who conducted multiple excavations in the Mississippi Valley. Like other archaeologists at the time,3 Dickeson tried to make sense of the history of the American continent prior to contact with Europeans, an enterprise based mostly on hypothetical conclusions. Furthermore, the subject of the panorama is not the Mississippi River, but the Mississippi Valley, allowing for a nonlinear, non-chronological vision of the landscape, shifting the focus away from nature towards cultures, both past and present. Communication theorist Howard Innis states that “concepts of time and space reflect the importance of media to civilization,” but separates “media which emphasize time” from “media which emphasize space” (7). Panoramic objects themselves then raise questions as durable, travelling media that embody both time and space, bringing them to varied spectators across the United States. However, in weaving geographies, temporalities, and discourses, Egan’s moving panorama brings a more complex array of layers to the eyes of beholders than other panoramic shows. How can we understand the Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley as a tool of the archaeologist in bringing his vision of the history of a space to a broader audience? And what does this specific panorama say about the articulation of ethnological and archaeological discourses, on the one hand, and the visual culture of the nineteenth century on the other? Previous research on the panorama has focused on the link between Dickeson’s archaeological practice and the creation of the panoramic show, but has focused less on the visual and artistic culture that also influenced iconographical choices (Luarca-Shoaf). Rachael DeLue places the Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley within a broader discussion of the politics of displacement and time measurement in the mid-nineteenth century, and her analysis brings valuable insights into the representation of the excavation of mounds by enslaved populations. In studying the Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley, I want to argue that this spectacular endeavor fits into a broader conception of the representation of the American historical landscape in the middle of the century. Approaching this artwork through its scientific, artistic, and political context of creation, I want to demonstrate how the Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley is a significant example of a mid-nineteenth-century approach to history and its transformation into spectacle that could tentatively be understood as extractive. I will first approach extraction as the physical practice of the archaeologist and its visual rendering on the canvas, but also as a strategy specifically set forth by Egan and Dickeson to turn scientific research into a popular show. Defining the modalities of this extractive practice will then prove useful to understand how this panoramic image functioned in bringing forward mid-nineteenth century ideas about prehistory and about the “missing link” between mound builders and contemporary Indigenous populations, and how they fit in with broader landscape artistic practices of the time. The images brought to viewers through the Panorama will thus be understood as a complex synthesis of time and space, but also of real and imagined visions of the layers of time extracted from the Mississippi Valley.

From Panoramas to Moving Panoramas: Spectacles with a Broader Audience

2Appearing at the turn of the nineteenth-century, panoramas were circular paintings that boasted the promise of an all-encompassing view to the viewer who stood on a central platform. Visions of cities and battles both near and distant were thus brought to the attention of an immersed viewer. However, after numerous attempts by entrepreneurs and maybe as many economic failures, panorama production started to wane in the 1840s. At the same time in the United States—as was the case a few years before in Britain—the panoramic medium became more portable and cheaper through the creation of moving panoramas. If the amount of canvas needed for each iteration—static or moving—seems to be comparable, the moving panorama required less investment in securing a place to show it. Whereas circular panoramas required large rotundas to be displayed (architectural structures that were not always present in cities), any theater, public house, or school could easily accommodate a moving panorama. Thus, these artworks entered circulation and American citizens from Natchez to Nantucket could experience panoramic images. While the static panorama induced movement on the part of the spectator, who had to turn and walk around the platform to see everything, the moving panorama created a static viewership that allowed the depiction of new subjects. While sitting still in the showing room, viewers saw the canvas unroll, and, with it, time passing before their eyes. Indeed, this new format made it easier to depict voyages and expeditions. It also emphasized an underlying idea of progression and temporality, which could not be conveyed by the immersive qualities of the original panoramas. With changes in American society also came changes in the subjects that could appeal to the largest audience. In his study of moving panoramas, and especially their introduction in the United States, Erkki Huhtamo explains this shift in terms of the iconography deployed:

Imported panoramas […] gave audiences glimpses of foreign lands, but Americans were more curious about their own continent. The expanding frontier, the experiences of the pioneers, the Indian wars, the voyages of discovery and the Civil War, provided plenty of topics. Virtual trips through the wilderness, adventures along the great rivers, and expeditions across the continent were (in)directly connected with the imaginations of all Americans. Moving panoramas fascinated everybody—those who were planning to go West and those who preferred to stay behind. (175-176)

3Amid the plethora of shows depicting battlefields and urban landscapes, Egan’s panorama stands out. If the Mississippi Valley is the central theme of the panoramic paintings, the panorama is neither geographically nor chronologically arranged. Out of the twenty-five frames that compose the linear Egan painting, three vignettes depict timed events linked to a colonial contact period; eight of them show a combination of mounds, Native American populations and European settlers with no trace of modern activities; four present uninhabited spaces—out of time and sometimes even mystical—while the rest bring to the foreground what could be considered contemporary visions. In these, we can see three representations of the act of digging by Dickeson.

  • 1 The show was sometimes also advertised as Panorama of American Slavery, especially when Brown toure (...)
  • 2  By the time the Smithsonian Institution was created in 1847, nearly a hundred local scientific soc (...)

4In mid-nineteenth-century America, Dickeson was not the only showman to stage his own appearance on the canvas of moving panoramas; other examples such as Ball’s Mammoth Panorama and Henry Box Brown’s Mirror of Slavery1 told the tales of the narrators’ escapes from slavery along with a broader history of enslavement in the southern states (Chaney). For Dickeson, as for the narrators of moving panoramas, the canvas was a novel way to engage with audiences that added to a larger practice of public touring conferences across North America supported by regional societies: abolitionists for Henry Box Brown, scientific groups in Dickeson’s case. Starting in 1845, Dickeson read numerous papers to members of historical societies and academies of natural sciences on the eastern seaboard.2 Interventions such as Dickeson’s and those of his contemporaries were reprinted and widely redistributed by the same institutions in special volumes as well as in newspapers.

Antiquarian Visions

  • 1 Nenette Luarca Shoaf has shown other efforts on the part of Montroville Dickeson to recreate this a (...)

5If excavated artifacts could be shown during lectures, the written proceedings of scientific societies eliminated the visual dimension from the archaeological reports: the maps, the bones, the arrows, and the vases were only present as words. The diffusion of science to a broader audience through these publications lacked the appeal of the discovery itself, the act of extracting concealed objects and remains.1 To compensate for this, antiquarians often had a parallel scientific production: carefully crafted editions combining maps, plates and views visualizing how the landscape was shaped by ancient populations. Such was the case starting in 1841 with the famous Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatán by John Lloyd Stephens, a publication richly illustrated by Frederick Catherwood, followed by Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, with new editions appearing frequently in the United States and Europe in the following years. The two volumes comprised 120 illustrations, all engraved from sketches Catherwood made on the spot. Some are just architectural details or line drawings of artifacts; others are full plates depicting ancient ruins and contemporary life surrounding them. There are also numerous views such as “Portion of the Western Range of Building, Monjas, Uxmal” (Fig. 2) in which Stephens seems to be the only human to have access to a ruin hidden behind bushes and trees, not stopping outside the structure, but stepping through the tiny opening to discover what’s inside.

Fig. 2. F. Catherwood, “Portion of the Western Range of Building, Monjas, Uxmal,” 1843

Fig. 2. F. Catherwood, “Portion of the Western Range of Building, Monjas, Uxmal,” 1843

Engraved plate from J. Stephens. Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1843, plate 21, p. 303, Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA), F1376.S84 v.1.

Source: hathitrust.org

  • 2 Catherwood’s Account Book, in the collections of the New York Historical Society, shows a decline i (...)
  • 3 Frederick Catherwood. Map of Jerusalem and Its Vicinity, Surveyed by F. Catherwood. New York, 1838.
  • 4 Account Book, op. cit. April 13 1840, p. 108: “Cash to Catherwood—for this amount [31 dollars] for (...)

6The picturesque appeal of such views is not to be dismissed when considering that one of the goals of that publication was to inform readers about ruins whose “existence […] was entirely unknown to the residents of the capital” (Stephens, 1843 iii). Underlining furthermore the “missing link” between contemporary inhabitants and the builders of these edifices, Stephens added that “it has been the fortune of the author to step between them and the entire destruction to which they are destined; and it is his hope to snatch from oblivion these perishing, but still gigantic memorials of a mysterious people” (Stephens, 1843 iv). Catherwood, who accompanied Stephens on his explorations, was an Englishman who relocated to New York in 1835. An architect and draftsman, he came to the United States with the purpose of exhibiting panoramic paintings that were produced from his drawings done in the workshop of Robert Barker. Visions of Jerusalem and Lima were thus presented by Catherwood, accompanied by George W. Jackson, a bookseller and investor, from Boston to Philadelphia. However, more than having an antiquarian appeal, these images were mainly presented as religious visions in order to bring crowds inside the rotundas. As the panoramic business was not as flourishing as they expected,2 Catherwood started giving conferences based on his travels to Jerusalem and Yucatan to his roster of shows (see the Republican Herald of December 12, 1838), published a detailed map of Jerusalem that accompanied the panorama,3 and even sold illustrated Bibles in his Broadway Rotunda.4 Scholars such as Angela Miller have drawn a link between Dickeson’s enterprise and publications such as Incidents of Travel in Yucatán; and the fact that both Dickeson and Stephens were antiquarians turning to artists to visually represent their field work visually reinforces that link (Miller 11 ; Koch 84). However, if vignettes of the Central American ruins and landscape might resonate with Egan’s depiction of the valley of the Mississippi, I would suggest that there were more likely visual sources that Egan invoked to complete the vision that Dickeson wanted to present to spectators.

  • 5 Davis and Squier, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley Accepted for Publication by the Smith (...)
  • 6 These objects came to the British Museum from the collections of the Blackmore Museum, which was sp (...)
  • 7 See also Winterer: “Strata became a new way of seeing. They suggested a place in time, a subterrane (...)

7In the Mississippi Valley too, antiquarians were producing literature on their findings, as did, for instance Ephraim George Squier (1821-1888), who collaborated with Edwin Hamilton Davis (1811-1888) in the excavation and study of ancient mounds. In 1848, Davis and Squier republished a previous version of their research as the inaugural publication of the newly created series Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge.5 While the first version is in the vein of scientific reports, with 90 pages and little visual material, the Smithsonian edition is richly illustrated with a little over 200 engravings. Part of the collection of objects excavated by Davis and Squier are today in the British Museum: more than 1.500 artifacts from arrowheads to animal remains, but also pipes with animal figures dating from 200 BC-400 AD and coming from the Hopewell Mound site in Ohio.6 These objects were the main source for the drawings present in the published study, along with some views of locales depicting petroglyphs. Studying the Davis and Squier publication of 1848 alongside Dickeson’s Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley brings to light new interpretations. The chapter on digging mounds is particularly interesting, showing the prevalence of depicting the strata of earth and pebbles, a visual formula that can be found in the panorama. As Rachael DeLue has shown, these stratigraphic descriptions drew on geological diagrams and were used by archaeologists to “install deep time where it [did] not belong” (38), equating these mounds with the sedimentation of fossils at a moment when geological eras were in the process of being defined (Fig. 3 and 4). Drawing on Caroline Winterer’s interpretation of the use of strata in the nineteenth century7, one could also understand Dickeson’s way of depicting open mounds as reproducing the subterranean geological time above the surface of the earth (Winterer 24).

Fig. 3. Anonymous, “fig. 29” [Mound Graph], 1848

Fig. 3. Anonymous, “fig. 29” [Mound Graph], 1848

Plate from Squier, Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 1848, p. 144. Library of Congress (Washington D.C.).

Fig. 4. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Fig. 4. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

8Reading Davis and Squier closely in relation to the painted panorama also brings to our attention how text can be translated into pictures. In the last chapter of their study, Davis and Squier indeed turned to petroglyphs—among the most mysterious aspects of nineteenth-century archaeological findings for contemporary audiences—which helped foster links with ancient Middle Eastern civilizations. Called hieroglyphic stones at the time, these engraved motifs resisted most interpretations except for a formal description of animals and humans. After the description of a few engraved rocks that they supposedly discovered in Virginia, Davis and Squier mention the existence of a special hieroglyphic rock:

There is a very singular one still in existence a few miles above the town of Portsmouth, the southern terminus of the Ohio and Erie canal, at the mouth of the Scioto. It consists of a colossal human head cut in outline, upon the vertical face of a large rock extending into the river. It is always under water, except when the river is at its very lowest stages, and is not exposed oftener than once in four or five years. It is familiarly known as the “Indian’s Head” and is regarded as a sort of river gauge or meter. (299-300)

9Looking back at Egan’s vignette of the “Indian Head” in the moving panorama (Fig. 5), one can see the liberty taken in interpretation. Indeed, the original etched face became, under the brush of Egan, a monumental sculpted “Indian Head” coming out from the waters on the panorama’s canvas.

Fig. 5. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Fig. 5. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

10The actual Indian Head Stone, which was sitting at the bottom of the Ohio River, had been for many years the subject of speculation as to who really carved the motifs on its surface, especially as people added their names on it throughout the nineteenth century every time it surfaced because the river was low. On an 1894 illustration, published in the Portsmouth Semi-Weekly Blade, one can see the carved face of the Native American peeking out from underneath the water, while the carved names are covering the outside part of the rock (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6. Indian Head Rock-newspaper illustration,

Fig. 6. Indian Head Rock-newspaper illustration,

Portsmouth Semi-Weekly Blade, September 22, 1894.

Source: wikimedia.org

11There could also be a misinterpretation as to what was the original Indian Head Stone, as there may have been several such river markers along the Ohio River and its tributaries. The “Indian Head” is also not the only imagined motif in this part of Egan’s panorama, as the petroglyphs depicted behind it do not seem to refer to any artifact known by nineteenth-century archaeologists, and differ greatly from known American petroglyphic productions depicted in Davis and Squier’s publication (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7. Anonymous, [Engraving depicting the Half Moon Archaeological Site]

Fig. 7. Anonymous, [Engraving depicting the Half Moon Archaeological Site]

Plate from Davis and Squier, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 1848, p. 298. Washington D.C., Library of Congress.

Extracting Motifs

12Dickeson’s combination of his own archeological materials with other motifs sourced from antiquarians digging alongside him in the Mississippi Valley can thus be understood as one part of the extractive strategy he set forward to fill the meters of canvas he unrolled every night for a different audience. The second part consisted in sourcing motifs from the visual culture of his time, from engravings to lithographs and paintings created by his contemporaries focusing on the American landscape and Indigenous populations, without crediting them to the original artists and draftsmen.

13Interestingly, the frontispiece chosen for the Smithsonian edition of Davis and Squier’s Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley is a reproduction of the Ancient Works, Marietta, Ohio, a lithograph produced by Sarony and Major and described as copied from a “painting in the collection of A. Nye Esq. in Marietta” (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8. Sarony and Major, from an original painting in possession of A. Nye Esq., Ancient Works, Marietta, Ohio, 1848

Fig. 8. Sarony and Major, from an original painting in possession of A. Nye Esq., Ancient Works, Marietta, Ohio, 1848

Plate from Davis and Squier, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 1848, frontispiece. Library of Congress (Washington D.C.).

14From the point of view chosen to the river and mountains in the background, from the crisscrossed trees in the foreground to the broken stump and the log cabin, the composition is the one that Egan also used to introduce the viewer to the Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi (Fig. 1). However, the painter took one liberty from the original lithograph, adding another figure copied from the widely circulated engraving by George Catlin (1796-1872) of Mah-to-toh-pa, the Mandan Chief (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9. George Catlin, Mah-to-toh-pa, the Mandan Chief, n.d.

Fig. 9. George Catlin, Mah-to-toh-pa, the Mandan Chief, n.d.

Lithograph, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of Natural History, Department of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, 1985.66.386,593GG.

  • 1 “Naval Panoramas” were displays of paintings depicting victories of the U.S. Navy circulating throu (...)

15George Catlin was a painter who specialized in depicting native peoples, first making portraits of those visiting the cities of Philadelphia and New York, but quickly going inland to develop an iconography where landscape and living conditions were added to the numerous portraits. First going to the West in 1830, he came back two years later, after having produced around forty landscape paintings following the course of the Missouri, in addition to series of buffalo scenes and Indigenous communities in the Missouri Valley. Most of these paintings are today in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. A lesser-known production depicting the landscapes of the Missouri Valley as mostly non-contact spaces, Catlin’s succession of paintings could be read as a step between early American shows with panoramic intentions such as “naval panoramas”1 and the moving panoramas that developed in the same decade. The early advertising for Catlin’s Indian Gallery reinforces this argument. Whereas today’s museum collections present the gallery of portraits in the nineteenth-century salon fashion, following engravings of the gallery dating from the 1850s, the initial presentation by Catlin of his paintings to a New York audience in 1837 was slightly different:

Mr. Catlin, who has been for six years traversing the Prairies of the “Far West,” and procuring the portraits of the most distinguished Indians of those uncivilized regions, together with paintings of their villages, buffalo hunts, dances, landscapes of the country, &c &c will endeavor to entertain the citizens of New York for a short time, with an exhibition of three hundred portraits and numerous other paintings. […] A series of forty landscape views, descriptive of the picturesque prairie scenes of the upper Missouri – and a series of twelve buffalo hunting scenes, together with splendid specimens of costume, will also be exhibited. […] In order to render the exhibition more instructive than it could otherwise be, the paintings will be exhibited one at a time, and such explanations of their dress, customs, traditions, &c given by Mr. Catlin, as will enable the public to form a just idea of the customs, numbers, and condition of the savages yet in a state of nature in North America. (Morning Herald, 3)

  • 2 See for example Frederick Dreer in Philadelphia, Proprietor of the American Museum and painter of a (...)
  • 3 See for example George Catlin, South Side of Buffalo Island, Showing Buffalo Berries in the Foregro (...)

16Catlin’s initial way of showing his paintings was thus similar to how moving panorama showmen paired their visual artifacts with oral explanations. The seated public was presented with a series of images while Catlin, turning from painter into lecturer, explained each one of them in detail. One difference between Catlin’s show and the partnership between Egan and Dickeson is the combining in one person of painter and showman, a feat that was also accomplished by other moving panorama entrepreneurs in these decades.2 Also, Catlin’s large number of paintings required the audience to see the show over two evenings in a row in order to see the whole collection. It is unclear whether Egan was aware of Catlin’s lectures on the Missouri, or ever attended one. However, the reappropriation of his drawings and motifs in the panorama, taken out of their general context, is reminiscent of the extraction and appropriation of artefacts from archaeological sites. Catlin’s influence in the panorama is thus interspersed throughout the canvas, and nineteenth-century visitors who were well versed in the visual culture of their time could recognize variations of portraits drawn as part of the Indian Gallery, such as Ee-ah-sa-pa, Black Rock, a Two Kettle Chief (Fig. 10 and 11), or the way he rendered some of the Missouri landscapes such as South Side of Buffalo Island, Showing Buffalo Berries in the Foreground (1832) or “Brick Kilns,” Clay Bluffs 1900 Miles above St. Louis3 (Fig. 12). In these, the sedimented rocks contrasting with the green of the lush grass are comparable to the scene in Egan’s Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (Fig. 13) entitled “Chamberlain’s Gigantic Mounds and Walls” on Dickeson’s advertising pamphlet (1851).

Fig. 10. George Catlin, Ee-ah-sa-pa, Black Rock, a Two Kettle Chief, 1832

Fig. 10. George Catlin, Ee-ah-sa-pa, Black Rock, a Two Kettle Chief, 1832

Oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm. Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), 1985.66.80.

Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.

Fig. 11. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Fig. 11. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

Fig. 12. George Catlin, “Brick Kilns,” Clay Bluffs 1900 Miles above St. Louis, 1832

Fig. 12. George Catlin, “Brick Kilns,” Clay Bluffs 1900 Miles above St. Louis, 1832

Oil on canvas, 28.3 x 36.3 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), 1985.66.366.

Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.,

Fig. 13. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Fig. 13. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

Discourses Surrounding the Mississippi Panorama

17To try to understand how this extraction of motifs from scientific and artistic sources worked in the context of the panoramic show, it is also important to frame the panorama with contemporary discourses on archaeology and especially on the separation of nineteenth-century Indigenous populations from their historical past. Indeed, the introduction of elements from contemporary visual culture to create a referential frame for the panorama viewer could be understood as a tool to help the public engage with Dickeson’s findings, but it also tells us much about his own interpretation of this archaeological material. In one of the pamphlets that Dickeson published in Baltimore to advertise his series of lectures on American Archaeology, he stated:

To us Americans, what History can be more interesting than that of our Aborigines. The monuments and relics found in the United States show that the earlier traces had arrived at a considerable degree of civilization. The stupendous Pyramids and Temples are perhaps their most extraordinary monuments. The number of these in the United States is upwards of three hundred thousand. Egypt, Greece and Rome have had their historians and even Herculaneum and Pompeii have become topics familiar to the ears of youth, while America where are found the most wonderful antiquities in the World, and these too coeval with the earliest works of man has suffered her primordial history to remain buried in the earth and obscured by the hand of time. Prof. D. will show the condition of the ordinary arts of life among both the Aborigines and our present Indians. (Dickeson 1851)

  • 1 Other contemporary scholars such as H. R. Schoolcraft believed in a continuity between ancient popu (...)

18Through his panorama, Dickeson thus dissociates the mounds and the contemporary presence of Indigenous populations, showing, as Nick Yablon has stated in his study of American ruins, that “before these mounds could be celebrated as legitimate antiquities, they had to be stripped of all associations with Indians, and invested with substitute legends” (47). A publication in 1833 entitled American Antiquities and Discoveries in the West by Josiah Priest indeed stated “wherever plats of ground, struck out into circles, squares, and ovals, are found, we are at once referred to an era when a people and nation existed in this country, more civilized, refined, and given to architectural and agricultural pursuits, than are the Indians” (86-87).1

19That disconnect between current populations and ancient constructions, this breach in traditions can also be visually experienced throughout the panorama, as Egan never depicted contemporary Indigenous people interacting with the mounds and ancient structures. Montroville Dickeson made statements in 1848 indicating that he followed Priest’s ideas of discontinuity between contemporary Indigenous populations and the “unhistoried nation” (Veit 107-8). Such ideas also find their origin, for Priest, in the lack of interest on the part of contemporary Indigenous populations in Mound builder’s traditions (Priest 215). However, one of the arguments for the preservation of mounds and tumuli by turning them into public parks (Veit 108) shows that Dickeson was aware that excavating them might never answer all of his questions, while at the same time destroying monuments that could put the United States on the same level of historical depth as European civilizations. These reflections are also the testimony of a growing awareness of and discussions concerning the notion of deep time in the United States and its impact in competing culturally with European powers. In other words, as Caroline Winterer states, “Deep time in fact bolstered Manifest Destiny by supplying the opening chapter to the glorious narrative of American Progress” (12). As with other discourses on the decline of Indigenous populations, archaeological discourses had to extract them from the deep history of the United States.

  • 2 See Veit: “Although a number of other archaeological sites are depicted in the panorama, including (...)

20This yearning to preserve mounds and tumuli and to turn them into public spaces is also addressed visually in the panorama in several scenes. This can be seen notably in what may be the most reproduced frame of The Monumental Grandeur, which depicts the excavation of a mound on the private property of William Feriday2 (Fig. 4). On the right side of the mound, as Rachel DeLue has pointed out in her essay “Measuring Native America, Early American Archaeology and the Politics of Time,” enslaved Afro-American workers are digging with shovels and pickaxes (46). Contrasting with the labor scene in the foreground, five figures in elegant dress are seen strolling between trees and the river. The three scenes preceding that one also depict contemporary people strolling or looking at mounds. Looking closely at the scene entitled “Ferguson Group” (Fig. 14), one can also see a group of onlookers seated as they are looking at the opening of one of the seven mounds, while more people are approaching the site from the river.

Fig. 14. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Fig. 14. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

  • 3 819 objects are labelled today by the museum with a provenance linking them to Montroville Dickeson (...)

21In addition, Dickeson’s movement towards the preservation of archaeological monuments was accompanied by the gathering of a collection of artifacts from sites that he excavated himself as well as from other places in the United States. This collection, which is today preserved in the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania,3 might have been exhibited along the panoramic painting, with the panoramic painting giving more life to these objects (Veit 118). Archaeological scholar Richard Veit has extensively demonstrated that some pieces in Dickeson’s collection were counterfeit or fake objects, sometimes copies made out of plaster because the original owners would not part with them. He has also shown that such objects were often circulated and led to misconceived opinions about the ancient peoples of the Mississippi Valley. The strong imagination needed to formulate hypotheses about what Dickeson called “unhistoried” populations might have thus transpired in the frames addressing archeology in the Panorama, from the placement of skeletons in the open mound to the invention of a language system made of lines and circles in the “Cave-In-Rock” or the “Indian-Head” frames. Such depictions were also informed by other archaeological discourses pervading American scientific societies in the middle of the nineteenth century claiming that the ancient civilizations that left their marks could have been Hebrew, Egyptians, Vikings, or even Hindus (Howey 438-44; Barnhart 15, 19).

From Scientific to Romantic Depictions

22A romanticized vision of the past is indeed prevalent in the Egan moving panorama, with distinctive features in the form of heads, multicolored glimmering caves, snow covered ziggurats and yellow-tinted skies adding an air of mystery to the ensemble (Fig. 15).

Fig. 15. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Fig. 15. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

23This romantic landscape is sometimes uninhabited, such as in the central scene of the panorama entitled by the lecturer “Prairie with Buffalo, Elk, and Gigantic Bust on the ledge of a limestone Rock – Spring Creek Texas” (Fig. 16).

Fig. 16. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Fig. 16. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

  • 1 Forshey’s discoveries are reproduced by Davis and Squier in their Smithsonian publication but witho (...)

24In this scene, as in three others—the “Indian Head” scene shows no sign of modern dwellings, though a sailing boat and a few houses can be seen on the horizon—, the spectator can see the trace of man but devoid of any temporal marker. In these, it seems that Egan took most of his artistic liberties from archaeological sites studied at that time. There is no trace in archaeological publications of a three-story graded pyramid; what Dickeson in his panorama calls “the Swale group” (Fig. 17) might refer to a site of earthen mounds and lakes studied by Caleb Goldsmith Forshey in 18451:

The swale continues up to very near the pond […] but has no actual connection with it. It does not appear that the lake in the woods, within this levée, has been produced by excavation. The smaller ones adjacent, however, are manifestly produced by throwing up the earth about them. The whole work, although exhibiting very little ingenuity, bears evidence of the vastness of the population, their industry, and not less certainly their ignorance and folly. (42)

Fig. 17. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Fig. 17. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

25In the panorama, if the overall organization of the historic site as studied by the antiquarian is reproduced with the crescent-shaped swale bordered with five small tumuli, Egan turns the “cultivated prairie lands” described by Forshey into abandoned swamps and the “Lake in Woods” seems to merge with the river in the background. Finally, the scene entitled “Bon Hom Island group—Distant View of the Rocky Mountains—Encamping Grounds of Lewis and Clark” resists interpretation. There is a Bon Homme County in present-day South Dakota, which could explain the presence of the Rocky Mountains in the background and the reference to Lewis and Clark’s expedition, but no such construction had been studied and written about in the nineteenth century. One of the most probable hypotheses is that Egan transposed a map of a studied site onto this mountain view; however, there is not a map that would correspond to the shape of the site depicted in the panorama in Davis and Squier’s publication or in the American Journal of Science and Arts of the time. While these uninhabited scenes add a sense of mystery to the whole panorama, others, such as the “Cave-In-Rock” scene, more directly explain the function of the archaeologist (Fig. 18).

Fig. 18. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Fig. 18. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

26The scene depicts a party of explorers discovering an ancient underground dwelling. Enhancing the effects of light and color inside the cavern, Egan creates an oneiric place, filled with crystals and coral-shaped concretions on the ground. The three men, armed with torches, bring the gaze of the beholder toward a stylized representation of a snake, one of the most widespread symbols of fertility and the underworld. Surrounding them, three skeletons and a mummified human, reminiscent of descriptions of American caves such as the Mammoth cave (Bullitt 23-27), act as both vanitas and a link between the unknown time of the inscriptions and the present time of exploration. Some vignettes even bring Indigenous populations into what we could call “suspended time”: neither part of the ancient Aboriginal civilization, nor part of the modernity of nineteenth-century America. This is the case in the last frame of the panorama (Fig. 19), another take on a lithograph published by Sarony and Major in 1848 (Fig. 20).

Fig. 19. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Fig. 19. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

Fig. 20. Sarony and Major, Chas. Sullivan, Great Mound at Marietta, Ohio, 1848

Fig. 20. Sarony and Major, Chas. Sullivan, Great Mound at Marietta, Ohio, 1848

Lithograph, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Washington D.C.), E74.M6S64.

27While the general composition of the Great Mound at Marietta was kept, the choice had been made, by Egan or Dickeson, to translate it into a luxurious jungle, something closer to a primordial swamp. The nineteenth-century tombstones and enclosure on top—the sign that it had been the site of archaeological diggings—have disappeared. Showing the contemporary native populations as out of time, as bystanders next to depictions of mounds could also be viewed as a way to assert their passivity towards understanding their own history. The individual in front of the Great Mound at Marietta looks at it, but without the intervention of antiquarians, depicted in many instances in the panorama, one cannot understand the “true chronology” of the lands they are occupying (Dickeson 1851).

Time and Space

28However, if the panorama combines temporalities, it is hardly a timeline. The only chronological order that can be perceived spanning the ten-meter-long piece of canvas is actually reversed. In his pamphlets, Dickeson pinpointed three historical events that appear in this order: the tornado of 1844, the Natchez Battle of 1729, and finally de Soto’s burial near the Mississippi, which took place in 1542, all moments of contact between indigenous populations and Hispanic, French and Anglophone settlers. Outside of these three historical scenes, Anglo-American settlers and antiquarians, and contemporary native populations are depicted by Egan and Dickeson as if they never acknowledge the presence of each other. The scene that comes the closest to illustrating the cohabitation of these diverse social groups would be Scene 16 described on the advertisement as showing both “Indians at their games” and “Natchez on the Hill” (Fig. 21). In the foreground a group of Indigenous people are playing Tchung-kee, a game where one shoots an arrow aiming for a ring rolled by another player, a scene also depicted by Catlin while traveling along the Missouri.

Fig. 21. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Fig. 21. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

Fig. 22. George Catlin, Tchung-kee, a Mandan Game Played with a Ring and Pole, 1832-1833

Fig. 22. George Catlin, Tchung-kee, a Mandan Game Played with a Ring and Pole, 1832-1833

Oil on canvas, 49.7 x 70 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), 1985.66.431.

Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.

29Just behind the group one can see wooden dwellings suggesting the town of Natchez below the Hill while the construction atop the mound could emblematize Natchez on the Hill. The presence of a steamboat in the middle of the river underlines the importance of the town as a place of rest on the route from New Orleans to cities to the north, such as Saint Louis.

30Finally, the penultimate scene of the moving panorama embodies multiple temporalities beyond the ancient and present time that pervade the panorama up to that point. In “Mammoth Ravine” (Fig. 23), Dickeson evokes the excavation of prehistorical animal bones by presenting at the same time their extraction, reconstitution, and transportation.

Fig. 23. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Fig. 23. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850

Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.

Eliza McMillan Trust

  • 1 The Daily Spy, Worcester, MA, January 16, 1846; The New York Herald, New York, N.Y., October 19, 18 (...)
  • 2 The Koch Mastodon is now part of the collections of the Natural History Museum in London. The Brews (...)

31The bones peeking through the earth of the cliff are the same as the ones forming the skeleton that Dickeson and a compatriot are studying in the foreground, already casting the time and effort of the diggers into the past. In the back of the scene, a carriage is painted with packages on top: could this be a future vision of the bones of a Mastodon being shipped to the eastern seaboard to be exhibited to the public1 and later acquired by museums in New York and Europe?2 With this scene, Egan departs from previous depictions of prehistorical excavations, such as Charles Willson Peale’s Exhuming the First American Mastodon Excavation of 1809 (Fig. 24). In Peale’s painting, if the massive labor of the excavation is not hidden from the viewer, the skeleton is absent, still buried under heaps of earth and water. Only the drawing held by the scientist leads us to understand what is to come up from the depths.

Fig. 24. Charles Willson Peale, Exhuming the Mastodon, c. 1809

Fig. 24. Charles Willson Peale, Exhuming the Mastodon, c. 1809

Oil on canvas, 127 x 158.7 cm, Baltimore City Life Museum Collection (Baltimore, MD), BCLM-MA.5911.

Gift of Bertha White in Memory of her husband, Harry White

32On top of distorting timelines, Dickeson’s lectures deconstructed a sense of geographical linearity, which was usually the norm with moving panoramas. A majority of the images focus on the Natchez region and Louisiana plantations, two regions where Dickeson spent most of his time researching the history and prehistory of the continent. One of the scientific publications of Dickeson focused on the cypress trees of Louisiana (Dickeson Report), and their presence in several scenes of the panorama might have supported a discourse on his Southern findings. However, the canvas begins and ends at Marietta, and the spectator could see the Rocky Mountains in the background of a South Dakota scene; the twelve-gated labyrinth mound is identified by Miller as being in Missouri (11), while the Grave Creek Mound is in Northern Virginia. Envisioning the Mississippi Valley, and not the river as Dickeson’s contemporary showmen were doing, the panorama painted by Egan presented a new landscape to the audience, a synthesis that resonates with artistic practices of the time perhaps more than has been appreciated in studies of this panoramic artwork.

The American Landscape as Spectacle in the 1850s

33When one considers the many references to George Catlin interspersed in the canvas, it is evident that, at least for John J. Egan, the panorama fits into the broader artistic ecosystem of the mid-nineteenth century, one concerned with bringing forward a distinctly American landscape to rival with European ideals. Landscape artists such as Thomas Cole yearned to see nature’s primeval aspect as the historical component of the American landscape, and even dismissed man-made monuments of so-called “unhistoried” populations living on the continent. While Cole stated that “American scenery is destitute of many of those circumstances that give value to the European” (4), and said of the American landscape that it was “untouched by history” (Tymn 131), Egan and Dickeson’s landscape maintains the opposite, namely that American scenery indeed possesses a historical stratum, even if it is one that resists deciphering. However, beyond the evident dichotomy in wilderness as a historical feature and the depiction of ancient monuments as pyramids of the West, I want to argue that Cole and Egan share a common trait in their approach to landscape, which Alan Wallach named “aesthetic pioneering”:

Confronting a nature “new to Art,” Cole and other early landscapists engaged in what might be usefully thought of as aesthetic pioneering. This metaphor underscores the parallels between a historical and cultural process. To depict a nature “new to Art” constituted an act of appropriation. Nature had to be seized, tamed, brought under the dominion of artistic law. Stripped of its unfamiliarity and otherness, the land became “ours,” the material out of which artist or writer shaped a cultural artifact. Aesthetic Pioneering thus designates an ensemble of cultural practices whereby unfamiliar terrain came to form a repertory of landscape painting and literature. (51)

34As Cole did with lakes and mountains, Egan and Dickeson made a similar appropriation of ancient constructions, taking over motifs to form their own visual vocabulary, supporting a historical and scientific discourse centered on American exceptionalism. However, as Cole saw “American associations not so much of the past as of the present and the future” (16-17), Dickeson, as an antiquarian, proves the contrary. Doing this, and inventing new motifs in the process, Egan and Dickeson participated in a larger movement towards a rendering of landscape as spectacle that started with early-nineteenth-century panoramas and culminated at the end of the 1850s with Frederick Edwin Church’s Heart of the Andes:

This transformation of painting into spectacle […] clearly intended to rival dioramas and panoramas, perfectly demonstrates the ambivalence of such a work. […] Church presents in a single image a synthesis of two years of travel, documenting the geography, climate and botany of this virgin world. At the same time, this spectacular presentation is a clear response to the expectations of a public eager, without taking the risk of traveling, to see, know and possess everything about this world now conquered by the painter’s gaze. (Wat 212-213)

35This extraction of motifs to bring forward new images to the audience is crucial to understand the Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur as a visual emanation of the culture that brought it to life, one where transportation was constantly shrinking distances, transporting tourists, explorers, and painters further and more quickly to “untouched” lands (Marx 194). In Church’s Heart of the Andes, the extraction was mostly botanical, but Egan and Dickeson pushed the metaphor further: not only evoking the actual excavation of artifacts and remains from the confines of the Mississippi Valley, they borrowed subjects from other artists such as Catlin, copying maps, diagrams, and lithographs published in scientific publications. They extracted motifs wherever they could, and when they could not, imagination filled in the gaps. In the end, every scene presented to the audience presents the mark of human intervention, real or invented.

Conclusion

  • 1 “It is the mystery, the impenetrable mystery veiling these aged sepulchers, which gives them an int (...)

36Unrolling the canvas, there is not a unified sense of time or space, nor a sense of what is real and what is imagined by Dickeson. Though some places depicted were drawn from maps and surveys, others are laid bare of historical references to deliberately keep a sense of mystery, a term that Dickeson used intentionally to describe the chronological gap between the creation of the mounds and their study in the 19th century.1 The spectators of the panorama were thus brought back and forth between deep time, modern time, and contemporary time, and between layers of interpretation of archaeological materials, and the way of procuring them. By curating a vision of the Mississippi Valley made out of landscape and historical motifs, Egan and Dickeson presented a stratigraphic geography of the United States, one where abandoned mounds and swales and past events are like layers that need to be excavated for the American audience. One could also say that the panorama “moved” the audience from beginning to end. Through the wonder of discovery to the dramatic effects of natural forces and human wrath, through grief and death to joyous games and peaceful family scenes, each vignette could steer viewers toward another emotion as the complete roll unfolded before their eyes, while anchoring them to a shared history of the American space. The narrative complexity of the Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley thus mirrors the questions raised in the middle of the nineteenth century about the history of pre-colonial occupation of lands, while proposing Dickeson’s hypotheses and conclusions in a more appealing way and to a broader public than contemporary scientific publications. More than a moving panorama, Dickeson, aided by Egan, presented a panoramic puzzle, embodying the fragmented state of archaeological excavation and interpretation in nineteenth-century America.

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Notes

1 The painter is John J. Egan, American (born in Ireland), active mid-nineteenth century.

2 Well-known variations on the theme include Banvard’s Geographical Panorama of the Mississippi River painted in 1847 and exhibited both in the United States and Europe, Smith’s Mississippi Panorama of 1849, and Lewis’ Mammoth Panorama of the Mississippi River.

3 Some contemporaries of Dickeson mentioned in this article are Edwin Hamilton Davis and Ephraim George Squier. For an account of the development of archeological practices, see Meltzer.

1 The show was sometimes also advertised as Panorama of American Slavery, especially when Brown toured with the panorama in England. Morning Star (Limerick, ME), November 26, 1851: “at Rochdale, Mr. Henry Box Brown […] held an exhibition of his Panorama of American Slavery…”

2  By the time the Smithsonian Institution was created in 1847, nearly a hundred local scientific societies were in activity across the United States, mainly on the eastern seaboard, but also a few in the Mississippi and Appalachian regions. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years 1863–1963. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 1978; see also Bates.

1 Nenette Luarca Shoaf has shown other efforts on the part of Montroville Dickeson to recreate this act of “digging” in the pages of the Lotus weekly magazine in 1848 (18).

2 Catherwood’s Account Book, in the collections of the New York Historical Society, shows a decline in ticket sales for the panorama, especially after 1840 (167).

3 Frederick Catherwood. Map of Jerusalem and Its Vicinity, Surveyed by F. Catherwood. New York, 1838.

4 Account Book, op. cit. April 13 1840, p. 108: “Cash to Catherwood—for this amount [31 dollars] for 1 set of Finden’s Bible Illustrations sold to H. E. Blatchford.” Finden’s Bible, known primarily for Turner’s illustrations, also presents plates engraved from drawings made by Catherwood (see Finden).

5 Davis and Squier, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley Accepted for Publication by the Smithsonian Institution, New York: Bartlett & Welford, 1848.

6 These objects came to the British Museum from the collections of the Blackmore Museum, which was specifically created to house the findings of Squier and Davis at Hopewell mound in England. The collection also comprises artifacts from Costa Rica, Teotihuacan, and south-east American states.

7 See also Winterer: “Strata became a new way of seeing. They suggested a place in time, a subterranean world that led from then to now” (24).

1 “Naval Panoramas” were displays of paintings depicting victories of the U.S. Navy circulating throughout the eastern seaboard at the beginning of the nineteenth-century. While described as panoramas by the entrepreneurs, they were in fact a succession of vignettes depicting the unfolding of events in the same place, thus adding a temporal element to the topographical. This idea was reused by creators of moving panoramas later on continuous pieces of canvas.

2 See for example Frederick Dreer in Philadelphia, Proprietor of the American Museum and painter of a panoramic View (Guillen). Better known figures such as John Banvard and Benjamin Russell also painted and toured with moving panoramas in the 1840s (Kauppila; McDermott).

3 See for example George Catlin, South Side of Buffalo Island, Showing Buffalo Berries in the Foreground, 1832, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.387.

1 Other contemporary scholars such as H. R. Schoolcraft believed in a continuity between ancient populations and contemporary Indigenous populations, while still acknowledging ruptures in traditions and lifestyles. Furthermore, Schoolcraft argument of lineage still serves an agenda in line with contemporary ideas about the primitive aspects of nineteenth-century populations (see his book published in 1851, Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States).

2 See Veit: “Although a number of other archaeological sites are depicted in the panorama, including the Cham Mounds, the Biloxi Shell Heaps, and Etowah Georgia’s Temple of the Sun, the Feriday scene is the only one showing an archaeological excavation” (110).

3 819 objects are labelled today by the museum with a provenance linking them to Montroville Dickeson and were purchased by the museum in 1899. Not all of them are artifacts from the North American culture area but they compose the majority of the collection. For more information see Penn Museum, accession lot 3577. www.penn.museum/collections/accessionlot.php?irn=3577

1 Forshey’s discoveries are reproduced by Davis and Squier in their Smithsonian publication but without the map of the archaeological site (113-114).

1 The Daily Spy, Worcester, MA, January 16, 1846; The New York Herald, New York, N.Y., October 19, 1845.

2 The Koch Mastodon is now part of the collections of the Natural History Museum in London. The Brewster Mastodon, later renamed Warren Mastodon, can be seen at the American Museum of Natural History.

1 “It is the mystery, the impenetrable mystery veiling these aged sepulchers, which gives them an interest for the traveler’s eye… The round tower, the moss-grown abbey, […] or the beautiful frescoes of Herculanum and Pompeii, around them time has indeed flung the silvery mantle of old while he has swept them with decay; but their years may be enumerated […] But who shall tell the era of the origin of these venerable earth heaps!—the race of their builders, the purpose of their erection, the thousand circumstances attending their rise, history, and desertion—why now so lonely and desolate?” (Dickeson, Catalogue 4).

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-1.png
Fichier image/png, 1,2M
Titre Fig. 2. F. Catherwood, “Portion of the Western Range of Building, Monjas, Uxmal,” 1843
Légende Engraved plate from J. Stephens. Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1843, plate 21, p. 303, Pennsylvania State University (University Park, PA), F1376.S84 v.1.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 211k
Titre Fig. 3. Anonymous, “fig. 29” [Mound Graph], 1848
Légende Plate from Squier, Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 1848, p. 144. Library of Congress (Washington D.C.).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 257k
Titre Fig. 4. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-4.png
Fichier image/png, 1,4M
Titre Fig. 5. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-5.png
Fichier image/png, 1,0M
Titre Fig. 6. Indian Head Rock-newspaper illustration,
Légende Portsmouth Semi-Weekly Blade, September 22, 1894.
Crédits Source: wikimedia.org
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-6.png
Fichier image/png, 366k
Titre Fig. 7. Anonymous, [Engraving depicting the Half Moon Archaeological Site]
Légende Plate from Davis and Squier, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 1848, p. 298. Washington D.C., Library of Congress.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-7.png
Fichier image/png, 648k
Titre Fig. 8. Sarony and Major, from an original painting in possession of A. Nye Esq., Ancient Works, Marietta, Ohio, 1848
Légende Plate from Davis and Squier, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 1848, frontispiece. Library of Congress (Washington D.C.).
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 191k
Titre Fig. 9. George Catlin, Mah-to-toh-pa, the Mandan Chief, n.d.
Légende Lithograph, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of Natural History, Department of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, 1985.66.386,593GG.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 175k
Titre Fig. 10. George Catlin, Ee-ah-sa-pa, Black Rock, a Two Kettle Chief, 1832
Légende Oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm. Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), 1985.66.80.
Crédits Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-10.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 256k
Titre Fig. 11. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-11.png
Fichier image/png, 1,2M
Titre Fig. 12. George Catlin, “Brick Kilns,” Clay Bluffs 1900 Miles above St. Louis, 1832
Légende Oil on canvas, 28.3 x 36.3 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), 1985.66.366.
Crédits Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.,
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-12.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 193k
Titre Fig. 13. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-13.png
Fichier image/png, 1,3M
Titre Fig. 14. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-14.png
Fichier image/png, 1,2M
Titre Fig. 15. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-15.png
Fichier image/png, 1,1M
Titre Fig. 16. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-16.png
Fichier image/png, 1,2M
Titre Fig. 17. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-17.png
Fichier image/png, 1,1M
Titre Fig. 18. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-18.png
Fichier image/png, 1,3M
Titre Fig. 19. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-19.png
Fichier image/png, 1,2M
Titre Fig. 20. Sarony and Major, Chas. Sullivan, Great Mound at Marietta, Ohio, 1848
Légende Lithograph, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Washington D.C.), E74.M6S64.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-20.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 151k
Titre Fig. 21. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-21.png
Fichier image/png, 1,3M
Titre Fig. 22. George Catlin, Tchung-kee, a Mandan Game Played with a Ring and Pole, 1832-1833
Légende Oil on canvas, 49.7 x 70 cm, Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), 1985.66.431.
Crédits Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-22.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 206k
Titre Fig. 23. John Egan, Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Valley (detail), c. 1850
Légende Distemper on cotton muslin, 2.28 x 106.07 m (90 inches x 348 feet), Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint-Louis, OH), 34:1953.
Crédits Eliza McMillan Trust
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-23.png
Fichier image/png, 1,3M
Titre Fig. 24. Charles Willson Peale, Exhuming the Mastodon, c. 1809
Légende Oil on canvas, 127 x 158.7 cm, Baltimore City Life Museum Collection (Baltimore, MD), BCLM-MA.5911.
Crédits Gift of Bertha White in Memory of her husband, Harry White
URL http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/docannexe/image/27287/img-24.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 248k
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Lucie Grandjean, « Unrolling Prehistory: Egan’s Moving Panorama and the Mediation of Archaeological Knowledge in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America »Transatlantica [En ligne], 2 | 2025, mis en ligne le 01 décembre 2025, consulté le 16 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/27287 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15i29

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Lucie Grandjean

Institut catholique de Paris

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